Case Summaries – Page 115 – Electronic Discovery Law

A.M.castle & Co. v. Byrne, No. H-13-2960, 2015 WL 4756928 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 12, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where Plaintiff sought ?physical access? to Defendant?s electronic devices based on the belief that Plaintiff failed to perform a thorough search, the court overruled objections to denial of the motion where Plaintiff failed to show that Defendant was in possession of any of Plaintiff?s company documents and where Defendant responded adequately to discovery, including hiring an outside party to perform forensic examination of the computers and utilizing hundreds of search terms proposed by the plaintiff

Nature of Case: Breach of employee confidentiality agreement, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with contract, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, and civil conspiracy

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Adesanya v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 2:13-CV-5564-SDW-SCM, 2015 WL 6122080 (D.N.J. Oct. 16, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court granted motion to compel production of computer used by Plaintiff for her work with Defendant?s competitor upon concluding that its likely contents would ?arguably be relevant to claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer? among other things, and ordered Plaintiff to produce the computer as it had been stored in the ordinary course of business and that the computer be provided to a third-party vendor for imaging and then returned to Plaintiff

Nature of Case: Wrongful termination, “claims that Plaintiff unethically competed with her employer”

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Loop AI Labs Inc. v. Gatti, 2015 WL 1090180 (N.D.Cal. Mar. 12, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court denied plaintiff?s motion for temporary restraining order which requested restrictions on defendant?s assets, and orders prohibiting destruction of evidence, expediting discovery, allowing plaintiff access to defendant?s email and social media accounts, and for the return of a laptop because the court found plaintiff failed to demonstrate it was likely to suffer irreparable harm absent injunctive relief. In asserting it would suffer irreparable harm, plaintiff argued defendant had demonstrated she would not observe her obligation to preserve evidence, but provided no evidence in support of this claim. Stating that ?suspicions are not a proper ground for injunctive relief,? the Court noted that counsel for each defendant were ?expected to advise their clients of their duty to preserve potentially relevant evidence and the serious consequences for failing to do so,? but denied further relief.

Nature of Case: Misappropriation of Trade Secrets; Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: Email, social media, laptop

L-3 Commcn?s Corp. v. Sparton Corp., 313 F.R.D. 661 (M.D. Fla. 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court addressed topic of key word searching and sustained in part and overruled in part Defendant?s objections to the Magistrate Judge?s order to run all searches proposed by the Plaintiff where certain terms were vague or duplicative; court laid out framework for resolving disputes regarding search terms deemed overly burdensome, including a requirement that the parties confer in good faith before coming to the court

Nature of Case: Claims alleging defect in m

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (search terms at issue)

Nuvasive, Inc. v. Madsen Med., Inc., No. 13cv2077 BTM(RBB), 2015 WL 4479147 (S.D. Cal. July 22, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: For Defendant?s failure to preserve its employees? text messages, court imposed an adverse inference.

Electronic Data Involved: Text messages

Junious Vital v. Nat?l Oilwell Varco, No. H-12-1357, 2015 WL 40417 (S.D. Tex. Nov. 30, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court sustained objection to award of costs for ?monthly expenses associated with maintaining a database of electronically stored information used to locate, retrieve, and store the plaintiffs? emails.?

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Bruno?s v. Bozzuto?s, No. 3:09-CV-00874, 2015 WL 1862990 (M.D. Pa. Apr. 23, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Where plaintiffs intentionally destroyed all paper and electronic copies of relevant financial information despite a duty to preserve citing the burden of storage, the court found that the destruction was in bad faith, but that the prejudice was minimal where other sources of evidence provided sufficient information to support Defendant?s defenses and thus ordered an adverse inference at trial; where one plaintiff was a Certified Public Accountant, court considered her professional capacity when considering the willfulness of the destruction, noting that it ?strains credulity? that an accountant would throw away all financial documents because of ?storage space?

Nature of Case: Breach of Contract

Electronic Data Involved: ESI (financial data)

S.E.C. v. CKB168 Holdings, Ltd., No. 13-CV-5584 (RRM), 2015 WL 4872553 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 7, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Rejecting defendants? explanation that their failure to preserve was the result of a vendor?s refusal to continue assistance for the reason of non-payment, the court found that defendants? had a duty to preserve the information stored on the corporate server that began ?well before the vendor stopped providing services? and reasoned that it was defendants? obligation to ?take ?all necessary steps to guarantee that relevant data was both preserved and produced,?? and also found that defendants were ?at a minimum grossly negligent? for failing to preserve relevant evidence where there was no evidence of efforts to preserve a readable copy of the corporate server nor evidence that they sought modification of the freeze on their assets in able to make payments to the vendor; magistrate judge recommended sanction of an adverse inference

Nature of Case: Securities and Exchange Commission investigation (SEC)

Electronic Data Involved: Contents of corporate server / “back office data”

Moore v. Wayne Smith Trucking, Inc., No. 14-1919, 2015 WL 6438913 (E.D. La. Oct. 21, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court concluded that Facebook materials are discoverable but would not require Defendant to produce his username and password and instead ordered Defendant to provide his attorney with postings from the relevant time period to be reviewed by the attorney?and not the defendant?to identify responsive information

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: Social network contents (e.g., Facebook, MySpace)

Webb v. Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., No. 13-1947(JRT/JJK), 2015 WL 317215 (D. Minn. Jan. 26, 2015)

Dec 01 2015

Key Insight: Court overruled parties’ objections to Magistrate Judge’s order addressing scope of discovery where underlying court properly considered and applied the principle of proportionality; addressing defendant’s alleged costs of production, court reasoned in part that ?The fact that a corporation has an unwieldy record keeping system which requires it to incur heavy expenditures of time and effort to produce requested documents is an insufficient reason to prevent disclosure of otherwise discoverable information.?

Nature of Case: Products liability

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Catagory:Case Summaries